25 February 2009
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| From left, Monash Deputy Chancellor Paul Ramler, Vice-Chancellor Professor Richard Larkins, Chancellor Dr Alan Finkel, Australian Ambassador Dr Geoff Raby and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (International) Professor Stephanie Fahey with the graduates. Picture - Southam Studios. |
Monash University has held its first-ever graduation ceremony in China.
One hundred and eighteen students from across all Monash faculties graduated on Saturday 21 February at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Beijing.
The graduation was presided over by Monash Chancellor, Dr Alan Finkel, with the graduation address delivered by the Australian Ambassador, Dr Geoff Raby.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Richard Larkins said the event recognised the support and contribution of parents, family and friends to the success of its students.
"The Beijing graduation provided students with the opportunity to share the special moment and their achievements with their families and friends," Professor Larkins said.
"The ceremony was also a symbol of the great importance the University places on our relationship with China."
The graduation ceremony included a series of research seminars with top Chinese universities and private companies, as well as a gathering of Chinese alumni.
Deputy Vice-Chancellor (International) Professor Stephanie Fahey said the wide range of events reflected the University's cooperation with Chinese partners.
"As well as hosting students from China, Monash has a very active program of research with leading Chinese universities including Sichuan University and Peking University," Professor Fahey said.
25 February 2009
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| Singers Mia Dyson and Liz Stringer. |
More than 700 people showed their support for Victorian bush fire victims at a relief fund benefit concert held at Monash's Gippsland campus on Saturday 21 February.
The event, presented by ABC Radio and The Lyrebird Arts Council, included popular Australian country singer Sara Storer, US singer Toni Childs, Mia Dyson and Liz Stringer.
The Monash Sinfonia and local Gippsland musician Brodie Young also performed on the night.
The benefit included an auction of items donated by the Hawthorn Football Club and musician Taasha Coates from The Audreys and raised $27,000 for the fire victims.
On Sunday, about 300 people attended a memorial service at the campus for the victims, addressed by Monash Gippsland chaplain Father Hugh Brown. The service also took a relay of the service at the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne.
Meanwhile the Gippsland campus continues to operate as the main staging area for the fires that have killed 11 people and devastated huge areas of the Latrobe Valley.
Gippsland Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor Helen Bartlett said the campus would continue to provide support through the coming weeks during the recovery period as the needs of local families are assessed and the fire crews continue to work to bring the fires under control.
Professor Bartlett said preparation for the intake of 2009 students had not been affected.
25 February 2009
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Monash medical researcher Professor Malcolm Sim is part of a major new international study into mobile phone use and brain cancer risk in young people.
Professor Sim, based at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, said the study would assess any potential brain cancer risks associated with the use of mobile phones by children and teenagers.
The five-year study will involve young people aged 10 to 24 who have had a brain cancer as well as people of a similar age who have not and will recruit participants from Australia, New Zealand, Spain, The Netherlands, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Israel and Canada.
Professor Sim said the study would be one of the first in the world that looked at any association between brain tumours and mobile phone use in this age group.
He said previous studies in older adults had returned both positive and negative results relating to a link between mobile phone use and brain cancer.
An occupational physician and epidemiologist, Professor Sim leads a team of 15 research staff, in the Monash Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health.
The research will be funded by the European Union and the National Health and Medical Research Council.
25 February 2009
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| Moloto Monyepao, Chamelee Bogoda and Joel Wan. |
For six Monash students from Australia and South Africa, the University's summer break offered the opportunity to get ahead in their studies and explore a new country.
The students were in Malaysia as part of the inter-campus mobility program, which allows students to study a portion of their degree programs at other Monash campuses.
The mobility program is a key feature of the Monash Passport.
Moloto Monyepao from Monash South Africa said his experience added another dimension to his university education, especially coming from a campus with a smaller student population.
"I now hope to study at the Sunway campus in Malaysia for a full semester," Moloto said.
Joel Wan from the University's Berwick campus in Australia said the teachers were friendly and supportive.
"They were always willing to help us if we encountered any difficulties or issues," Joel said.
Chamelee Bogoda from the Caufield campus said the students got the opportunity to travel around and truly experience Malaysia.
"The best thing about being here, apart from meeting people from different backgrounds and experiencing the diverse cultures, is the fact that shopping in Kuala Lumpur is fantastic." Chamelee said.
25 February 2009
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| Professor Alan Trounson |
Australian IVF pioneer Professor Alan Trounson has been honoured with the David de Kretser Medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to Monash University's Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.
The David de Kretser Medal was one of two awards presented by the Monash University Medical Foundation at Government House on Thursday 12 February, 2009.
The medal is named in honour of Professor David de Kretser - the current Governor of Victoria - who received his MD from Monash in 1969.
The medal is awarded annually to an individual who has made an exceptional contribution to the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.
Previous winners include Professor John Murtagh AM, Professor Warwick Anderson AM and Emeritus Professor Mollie Holman AO.
Professor Alan Trounson is a world-renowned biologist and the founder and former Executive Vice-Chairman of the Australian Stem Cell Centre.
In 2007 Professor Trounson accepted the appointment of President of the $3 billion California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).
The Monash University Medical Foundation also recognised John Curtin Distinguished Professor of International Health, Professor Michael Alpers AO, with a Lifetime Achievement Medal for his commitment to community health and equity in health on an international scale.
Professor Alpers has spent much of his working life carrying out field studies with rural communities in the tropics. His research interests include malaria, respiratory diseases (pneumonia, asthma), and virus diseases of the tropics.
25 February 2009
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| Dr Robert Peacock |
Thirty students from across the world attended a postgraduate course in victimology at Monash South Africa recently - the first to be held in Africa.
Victimology is the scientific study of victims including the relationship between victims, their offenders and the criminal justice system.
The two-week course was organised by Dr Robert Peacock from Monash South Africa's Criminology and Criminal Justice Department.
He was assisted by Dr Jaco Barkhuizen who recently joined Monash from the Tokiwa International Institute of Victimology in Japan.
Monash South Africa was chosen to host the event because of Dr Peacock's experience in international victimology research.
"The hosting of this course signals a new beginning for victimology and victims on our ravaged continent," Dr Peacock said.
"It positions Monash University as a very important domestic, regional and international role player in the field of victimology and in efforts to ameliorate the plight of victims and promote social justice."
The course was presented in association with the World Society of Victimology (WSV) - a non-profit organisation that aims to advance victimological research around the world.
WSV membership includes victim assistance practitioners, social scientists, social workers, physicians, lawyers, civil servants, volunteers, university academics and students.
Dr Peacock was recently selected to serve on WSV's executive committee.
Visit the Monash South Africa website for more information on studying Criminology and Criminal Justice.
25 February 2009
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A new and improved carpool matching service allows Monash students and staff to share one-off trips as well as regular journeys.
The service enables anyone to offer or seek rides to and from all the Victorian campuses as well as those in Malaysia, Italy and South Africa.
Students and staff can also find arrival and departure times up to an hour before and after the times they have entered, and search by postcode or suburb.
The system can be accessed through my.monash portal or the Facilities and Services website.
Transport Officer for the Office of Sustainability, Stefan Siebel, said staff and students would be able to find carpool mates in their area through a more targeted search within the university community.
"We believe this real-time matching is a very useful addition to the type of regular carpool commuting that has been happening at Monash for decades now," Mr Siebel said.
"Live carpooling allows for much more flexible travel behaviour and encourages people to think about their transport choices more consciously rather than just jump into their cars and go places on their own.
"In return you get free campus parking spaces and you can even share your petrol costs with your rideshare mates."
Monash currently provides more than 600 dedicated carpool spaces at Berwick, Caulfield, Clayton and Peninsula campuses.
Permits can be obtained from Security and Traffic offices after registering at the Facilities and Services carpool website.
25 February 2009
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| Competition winners with members of the Positive Monash committee. |
A new group has been formed to enhance the well-being and experience of students and staff at Monash.
Positive Monash aims to bring positive psychology to Monash, providing different perspectives to help people foster strength, optimism and confidence.
Late in 2008 Positive Monash held a competition asking staff and students to convey their positive stories about their time at Monash.
More than 60 entries were received covering different aspects of university life, from volunteering, favourite teachers and the welcoming environment at Monash.
Winning entries included Meagen Teague, a Master of Education student from the Gippsland campus, who wrote about her experience volunteering to teach international students to swim.
Chana Grossbaum, an Art and Design student from the Caulfield campus, collected handwritten letters from people that told of something they had always wanted to say but had not.
The group has representation from Health, Wellbeing and Development, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Faculty of Business and Economics, Occupational Health and Safety and Student and Community Services.
If you would like to join Positive Monash email Suzanne Wolf at Suzanne.Wolf@adm.monash.edu.au.
For more information on the Positive Monash interest group and programs at Monash, contact Jude Little at Judith.Little@adm.monash.edu.au.25 February 2009
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| A Southwood Boys Grammar student completes an agility test. |
Monash opened the doors of its new High Performance Sports Centre in Blackburn Road, Clayton, to students from Southwood Boys Grammar last week.
The school was the first to undergo the Student Health and Education Program developed by Monash Sport.
The program aims to assess, educate and identify talented students, helping them to improve their knowledge of health and exercise while identifying potential high-performance athletes.
Once known as the Melbourne Cricket Centre, the centre boasts 1500 square metres of fully netted indoor training areas, gym and circuit training facilities, a medical room, large boardroom and administration space.
The centre will double as a training area for Monash University's elite athletes.
Director Monash Sport Martin Doulton said the centre was a unique facility in Victoria, and the university sporting sector.
"This facility opens up opportunities for Monash University to establish strategic alliances based around our teaching, research and community engagement themes with high-profile sporting teams, community groups and state government sectors, while offering a quality facility to the public and schools in the south-eastern suburbs," Mr Doulton said.
Last year ended on a very positive note for Monash. We were awarded $89.9m from the Commonwealth Government's Higher Education Endowment Fund, the full amount we requested.
The first allocation from the fund was brought forward from July 2009 to December 2008 because of the global financial crisis as part of the package designed to stimulate the economy, and the sum dispensed was increased from $310m to $586m.
Our successful application was for the New Horizons Centre, a state of the art building to accommodate 300 of our academics from Science and Engineering and 150 CSIRO scientists. The main research themes in the centre will be materials, clean energy and simulation-directed smart manufacture. The approach will be multidisciplinary and will involve close partnerships with industry.
Monash will make a cash contribution of $56m to the project over four years and CSIRO will make a cash contribution of $14.9m.
In total, 11 universities received funding in this highly competitive initial round, with only four receiving $78m or more.
In addition to this allocation, the Government unexpectedly also distributed a further $500m as the Teaching and Learning Capital Fund. This was distributed on a formula basis related to the domestic student load. Monash received an additional $26m to use for capital works on teaching and learning facilities.
Taken together with the allocation of $500m as the Better Universities Renewal Fund in the May 2008 budget, it can be seen that the Government has acted on its stated commitment to address the neglect of universities over the last dozen years or so.
These substantial allocations will help universities to address their large backlogs of capital projects. From Monash's point of view it will allow identified priorities in relation to the science/engineering precinct to be addressed while maintaining our ongoing program of major refurbishment, including the high priority Menzies refurbishment program.
Of course, the allocations for capital refurbishment do nothing to address the inadequate recurrent funding for domestic undergraduate education and for the indirect costs of research. This means that the budget situation for 2009 remains tight.
2009 is likely to be the most significant year for Australia's universities for two decades. The Bradley Review of Higher Education was released in December 2008 and the Cutler Review of Innovation was released last September. The Government responses to these reviews will have a fundamental impact on our universities. Both recognise the significance of universities to Australia's future and outline how Australia has been falling behind with respect to public funding of its universities for education and for research compared with other countries and how this has impacted on student:staff ratios and some elements of the student experience.
The reviews also recognise that the failure to fund the full costs of research and domestic undergraduate students leads to universities having to cross-subsidise both the costs of research and the cost of education of domestic students from income from international students.
The Bradley Review makes many recommendations and I refer you to the Review of Australian Higher Education report.
Instead of attempting to cover the entire report, I will emphasise here only a few important recommendations.
The review recommended a 10 per cent increase in funding of education through the Commonwealth Grants Scheme, to be followed by a new indexation system which would ensure realistic increases in funding from year to year rather than the derisory increases that have been crippling the system.
In common with the Cutler Review of Innovation the Bradley Expert Panel argued for a move toward full-funding of the costs of research funded through national competitive grants, initially by increasing the value of the Research Infrastructure Block Grant to 50 cents for every dollar of project-based research grants, compared with its current value of just over 20 cents in the dollar.
It recommended negotiated targets for universities with respect to equity objectives with part of the funding being dependent on meeting those targets.
It also advocated for the establishment, under the aegis of the Commonwealth, of a national body to accredit universities that would also have oversight of vocational and tertiary education. This would involve a substantial transfer of responsibility for post-secondary education from the States to the Commonwealth and would allow better coordination of activities and transition pathways between the vocational education and training sector and the universities. It is not clear what the States' view will be on this.
The most controversial recommendation relates to the funding mechanism. The review suggested that all eligible students should be provided with learning entitlements or vouchers which they could choose to use to support their education at any public university and for any course to which they could gain admission. This system would apply only to public universities at first but could be extended to the private institutions and the Vocational Education and Training sector later.
Universities could admit as many students as they wished in the disciplines they chose. The panel hoped that better market information provided to students would ensure that the students' and universities' choices would match the nation's workforce needs, but the Panel recommended reserve powers for the Government to regulate numbers in disciplines judged to be national priorities.
Significantly the panel did not recommend deregulation of fees although it did suggest that by mutual agreement universities could charge full fees in courses for which they received no government-supported students.
Moving to a more deregulated and student-demand driven system rather than a regulated supply-driven system has attractions, but continuing to cap fees in the face of deregulation of load may have some unintended consequences.
It seems likely that if the only way that universities can increase teaching income from Australian students is by increasing intakes, the larger, more prestigious metropolitan universities may choose to do so, particularly in areas of relatively low cost and high demand.
Universities may also limit places in higher cost areas. I will leave it to your imagination to hypothesise on what these might be but it is unlikely that it will provide a good match for national workforce needs. Moreover the financial incentive for prestigious universities to increase numbers of students may be more damaging to smaller, less prestigious and regional universities than a system that allowed variation of fees. If deregulation of fees were to be introduced, equity concerns could be met by a requirement for a significant proportion of places to be offered as fee-remission scholarships to students from disadvantaged groups.
The point I wish to make relates not so much to the details of the model but rather to emphasise that the funding system has the potential to have a profound effect on the future of our universities as well as on our students and future generations of students. The details will be important and it will take time to work through them carefully.
In the meantime it is urgent that the funding recommendations of the reviews relating to support for education, research and financial support for students are enacted.
Taken together with the Cutler Review, the Bradley Review proposes many changes that will benefit the capacity of our universities to deliver the educational, research and research training outcomes that our nation needs if it is to be a significant player in the knowledge economy of the 21st century and if it is to play its part in solving some of the urgent problems facing the planet.
The Government's response to both reviews is therefore of fundamental importance in determining the future not only of our university system, but of our country.
25 February 2009
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| Travis Beddoe |
Name: Travis Beddoe
Title: Doctor
Dept: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
How long have you been with Monash University?
Six years.
Prior to working at Monash, where were you located and what was your role?
I was at the University of Melbourne where I completed my PhD.
What challenges are ahead in your current role?
To continue to build my own research group.
What is it about your job that holds your interest or is particularly satisfying?
The ability to understand how proteins work at molecular level.
You received an award recently. What was it and how does it benefit your career?
I received a National Association of Research Fellows of NHMRC post-doctoral award. The award recognises outstanding independent research achievement during the first five years after receiving a research doctorate.
What is your favourite place in the world and why?
Egypt, due to its history and also the diving in the Red Sea is fantastic.
What is the best piece of advice you have received?
Continue to learn at all times.
What is something about yourself that most of your colleagues wouldn’t know?
I am a former Victorian amateur boxing champion.
25 February 2009
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Mannix College this week celebrates the 40th anniversary of its first intake of students.
Named in honour of Catholic Archbishop Daniel Mannix, Mannix College opened its doors on 28 February 1969.
Over the past four decades the college has been home to more than 10,000 postgraduate and undergraduate students from all Monash campuses.
Mannix College is affiliated with Monash University and is located directly opposite the Clayton campus.
Mannix College will host a re-union dinner later in the year.
For more information visit the Mannix College website.